Born in 1929, Wolfe was a star of British film and television, working with comic talents such as Hattie Jacques and Ronnie Corbett, before coming to Australia in 1959.
He became popular as the host of the variety show Revue ‘61 (later Revue ‘62). The weekly series, from Sydney’s ATN7 and produced in association with the Music Corporation of America (MCA), is reported to have been the first Australian television production sold to an overseas network (Canada’s CTV) for prime-time screening.
Revue ‘61 won a TV Week Logie in 1962 for Best Variety Show, and Wolfe won Logies in 1961 and 1962 for Most Popular Male Personality in New South Wales.
Revue ‘62 was abruptly axed mid-year, with Wolfe moving into radio as host of a daytime program, Wolfe At The Door, syndicated across Australia through the Macquarie radio network.
His next stop was to the US where he featured in a string of shows including I Dream Of Jeannie, The Monkees, Love On A Rooftop, That Girl and The Munsters, and was a writer for the iconic sketch comedy series Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-In.
He had spent the last decade working as a lecturer, and later a professor, in dramatic writing at The University of New Mexico.
He died in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Thursday.
Digby Wolfe is survived by a sister.
Source: The Age. IMDB. TV Times, 27 June 1962. TV Week, 25 September 1976. TV Times, 19 February 1977.
It was at 7.00pm on Friday, 27 April 1962 that Ballarat’s first television station – BTV6 – made its first official broadcast.
BTV6’s early line-up of presenters included children’s host Max Bartlett (later to gain national fame on The Magic Circle Club), newsreader Arthur Scuffins (pictured) and presenters Eric Gracie, Val Oldfield, Brenda Reid and David Bell. Early program line-ups for the channel included Australian productions BP Pick A Box, Revue ‘62, The Johnny O’Keefe Show, The Bert Newton Show and The Best Of IMT. And with the local ABC station almost a year away, BTV6 in August commenced the direct relay of rural affairs program Country Call from ABV2 in Melbourne, keeping viewers in Ballarat and Western Victoria up to date each week on rural and agricultural matters.
As well as local news the channel maintained a steady schedule of local production over the next 30 years including children’s programs, rural affairs, daytime chat shows, sporting telecasts (including the annual Stawell Gift), religious programs, talent quests and variety programs. Apart from News, possibly the most successful local production to come from BTV6 was the variety show Six Tonight, hosted by Fred Fargher. The weekly program, often featuring local performers as well as national guest stars, ran for over a decade from 1972. The program, later re-named Thursday Night Live, gained a wider audience in the mid-1980s when it was picked up by other regional channels across Victoria – giving the show a potential audience of around one million viewers each week.
Back in the days when country TV station staffers had to be jack-of-all-trades, Gary Rice was a musician and later sales manager at the channel. He also read the local news and became general manager of the channel and later its parent company. His experience in management at BTV6 led to him taking on executive roles at the Nine, 
Expansion across the Regional Victoria market as the Nine Network affiliate saw VIC TV dominate – the first ratings survey post-aggregation saw VIC TV outrate its competitors Prime and Southern Cross Network combined.
It was a brief stroll down memory lane on tonight’s edition of Seven’s Australia’s Got Talent when actress, performer and former TV host Hazel Phillips entered the stage.
